


Use It or Lose It

by frooit



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack, Crack and Angst, Dark, Drug Dealing, Drug Use, Happy Ending?, M/M, Marijuana, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Not Beta Read, One Shot, Recreational Drug Use, Short, nothing really happens, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:37:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3993760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frooit/pseuds/frooit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snafu's a drug dealer, and Sledge is just along for the ride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Use It or Lose It

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the facts in this story are true in some way or another. Either they're my own experiences or things I've heard over the years from fiends and family. It's strange, it's unusual, it's kind of an exercise in "write what you know", so. Read with discretion. Originally posted to LJ in 2011. Hasn't been touched since.

Before Eugene kicks off his young life, his ongoing journey into greatness or mediocrity, he'll find a place to call his own. His path is laid out in the form of college coming so many months away. Before the hustle and bustle of getting to classes and pounds of homework and over-do laundry and projects and studying and drinking and girls... he's got to get his virgin white feet wet and fall from the nest. It'll be the first time he's been on his own. He'd admit to feeling fluttery and anxious, like a nest of butterflies, all ready to go, onward and upward, as they searched for an apartment near his campus, but he wasn't afraid. He had no idea what to expect. That's probably all the better.

He might have had second thoughts.

His parents had two boys. His older brother has already washed his hands of college and gone off somewhere in the world to do what he wanted with the Sledge name. Eugene was never close with his brother. Childhood was awkward. He grew up shy and reserved. He's the youngest and the last after all. His mother was all too aware of this. She didn't make it very easy, regardless of her feigned good spirits, he could see the sadness forming, gaining weight in her eyes as his departure came closer. He could see it stagnating, turning cankerous even. She'd never gone to college. Her family was traditional. They say: she's a woman, she's to stay at home and tend the kids, and so she did.

And here she is now, saying goodbye.

 

He's looking up.

There's his home, his new home, and he's afraid. Genuine fear gnaws at him. The building is two stories, blue, and probably out of the sixties. It's mostly formless and lacking personality. Four cement steps lead up to the entrance where two white doors stand side by side. The upper level has two wide windows facing the street, the lower level, his level, comes to three wide bay windows in a trapezoid shape. The blinds are pulled and the lights are off.

No one's in just yet.

He takes a breath, a good one, and lets it out as he ascends the stairs and comes face to face with his front door. The key slides in easily and he opens the door for the first time. A mausoleum cracked open. A vacuum seal broken. The residual smell of cleaning chemicals and dust stirs. His mother shoves in behind him, carrying a small box.

She smiles.

"Oh, this is nice, Eugene."

"Yeah," he says, and gets a whiff of something new.

He hasn't stepped off the landing and into the empty living room yet.

He hasn't even stepped from the threshold.

It's smoke though, isn't it?

He looks up and back, to the two wide upper windows. The weather's a bit on the warm side so both of them are open and the blinds are pulled up. He spots an outline then as his head rocks on its roots, a shadow, a person watching from above. A jet of grey shoots through the screen. It's taken by the wind and snuffed out. He can't make out a face, or even a gender, but the shadow doesn't move away, it's staring him down.

"Eugene!" his mother calls.

 

It's his first night in his new place and he sits on an unopened box for two hours, alone. Sits and doesn't do much else. The ceiling's in that grainy stucco style. He'd surely be staring at the bottom of his neighbour's shoes, socks, naked feet, from here. He'd be all eyes, like a rat in a hole. A drowning man. A slave in a cage. A child to a parent. He's trying to get a feel for the place. Test the waters, or something like that. So far he's alright. He's doing okay. The traffic noise makes it not seem so lonely; buses roar by, horns honk, dogs bark, and his upstairs neighbour laughs. And what a laugh it is. Long and loopy. His first lonesome melody. His first solitary development.

The red numbers on his clock tell him it's ten o'clock, and he should be getting to sleep soon. His mother and father will be back tomorrow afternoon with a sofa, his bed, and more furniture. Nothing but a pillow and a sleeping bag tonight. He looks up from below, to that jaundiced stucco above on high, and his neighbour's distant laughter, all alone.

 

He's disturbed from sleep by a beat thumping. It's coming down, rattling down from his ceiling, and his walls, down from overhead. There's the hint of a new smell, too. A perfume, a flowery perfume. The musical thump-thump goes on and on through the early morning hours, edging its way into his head, reverberating, aggravating his sore back. New aromas join in, some spicy yet damp, some sweet yet strong. He goes on unpacking boxes. The thump, thump, thumping only stopping to start anew as another song. After his second emptied box he wants to beat down his neighbour's door. He wants to blast it open in one swift kick and tell him (or her, or it) to shut that crap off, righteous and angry index finger wagging. The pulse of his heart ticks in his fingers and his temple.

It's not until the yelling takes off that he stops, stops organizing the bookshelf he'd started on and goes to the front door, unthinking, running off contempt. He swings it open and turns a quick left. He stands and regards the door there. Holding his hand out in the shape of a fist, ready to knock, he regards that too. His knuckles bounce against the hard surface. He really has to bring the hammer down, tenderizing the flesh in order to make a noise. It's a bang, bang, bang to the music's thump, thump, thump. He's positive they won't hear.

He steps back. An uncertain minute passes. The locks disengage, the doorknob turns; he's feeling very much like he wants to turn and run (run for cover, run for land and country) down the street or jump back inside his apartment's (cool, sterile) safety. He swallows, his throat bobs, the door opens.

"Yo."

A young man no older than himself emerges. He's shorter though, but not by much. His hair is dark and curly, hanging no longer than over the shell of his ears. His lips are red, his eyes nocturnally wide and eternally blue, damnably blue. The skin of his face tan (tanner than milky Eugene Sledge, by far). He's wearing pajama pants printed with some rock band's logo and a torn up, frayed-out eggshell wife-beater. He's squinting at the light. A cigarette dangles. Smoke from inside draws out. Eugene gets the skunky signature of marijuana, the dry grit of tobacco and too much strawberry incense. The guy hangs there, leaning, expression questioning and blank all at once.

Eugene finally starts.

"Your music's too loud."

"Oh, shit. Shit, yeah, man. Sorry."

His cigarette puffs on every word.

His voice is cracked and dry, husky.

"Not used tah having someone down here. Mah bad."

"It's okay..." Eugene trails off, more than a little intimidated by the entire situation.

Muscles show on the guy's arms, lean and compact. The whites of his eyes are threaded through with micro-lines, reddish branches twisting, turning, confused. Overall, they're cloudy, his eyes, and fantastical, mystical, far out there, Eugene has to twitch away. He diverts to the metal runner along the bottom of the door frame. To the metal railings along either side of their small concrete stoop. To the faded blue shingles. To his socked feet. To nothing at all.

"Yeah, I'll turn it down. Howdy, by tha' way."

"Um. Hi. Eugene."

He puts his hand out.

The guy shakes it.

His palms are moist and warm.

"Snafu. An' video game hands. Sorry again."

"Huh?"

The guy suddenly smiles and cocks his head.

"Come up for ah smoke, new neighbour?"

"Um."

It hits Eugene like a ton of bricks, weed smoke wafting.

"No. Actually, I've got to unpack still."

He diverts his eyes again and shuffles his feet in place.

"Alright. Offer still stands."

Snafu tips his chin at him.

"Later," he says.

Eugene wilts and steps inside his apartment, closing the door.

The music dies down.

Eugene feels lesser for it.

 

He doesn't see that Snafu again for nearly three days. In that time he's gotten all his furniture dropped off and most of his boxes unpacked and broken down. It's starting to feel like a home, like a place to hang your hat (if Eugene had one). Almost. He's recognizing drawers and pictures he had on this wall or that wall back at his parents house, in his room. He's feeling dislocated by their transplantation to here. The living room, where he's been spending most of his time (sleeping, eating, pondering his future), is a mess. An organized messed. He has books stacked ten high or so on one side of the room. Furniture for other rooms take up any other available space. He hasn't quite chomped the bullet and started deciding where things should go.

For all of those three days the music hadn't thumped.

Not until this day.

Thump.

And Eugene's up.

Thump.

And he's out the door.

And thump goes his fist against Snafu's door.

"Gene, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Haven't seen ya in a while. What's up?"

"Your"

"Wanna come up?"

"Uh."

He starts off on a tear, as if already in conversation.

"this German industrial music, man. And I'm not sure if ah like this new demo I got. And this new piece ah got either. Eighty bucks on it, man. I mean, it's glass and everything, pulls real clean, and Russ claims it's 'un-not-unbreakable', but..." It's a slur ten times the thickness of cold molasses and just as good for you.

He's wearing the same pajama pants, the eggshell wife-beater replaced with a dark green one. It dilutes the tones in his eyes, makes them grey, pulls hard on the bags under his eyes. He's smoking, the puffs coming out in chesty breaths. He looks like death but he's smiling, dreamily, serenely.

Eugene can't say no.

If only to get away from the noise of memories.

 

A narrow flight of stairs takes them up into Snafu's place. It levels out into the same layout as Eugene's rooms. An exact mirror (just busier and cramped, because of the junk piled up). There's the same living room opening into a small dining area. The same kitchen that breaks off to the left. Continuing still, in a straight line from the front door, is his bedroom and bathroom. It's not huge, by any means, but it's perfect for one (or two) persons.

All the incense sticks burning and his omni-present cigarette leaves a smudge in the air, a visible cloud. It's difficult at first to take a single breath in. A single, modest inhale. Eugene finds himself moving for the windows and the fresh air, but after a few moments he ceases to even smell the perfumed smoke, let alone to choke on it.

Snafu plants himself in a leathery mustard coloured (or maybe it's goldenrod; it's the most disgusting thing he's ever seen) couch centered between two end tables laden with ashtrays, lighters, soda cans, and peppered in ash. Fine ash from the incense, chunks of ash from the cigarettes. Posters line the walls. Many from movies he knows, many not.

Whatever this guy is, he's plugged in. He has two flat screen televisions, cable internet, several video game consoles, a yeti of a PC tower and two lingering or standby laptops. Cords run like veins along the baseboards, under their feet, into adjacent rooms. It's a human network. A think tank. Snafu calls it his command center. Eugene has to smile.

It's quite interesting.

At the center of this command center, in front of the TV screens, there's a low yielding coffee table. It comes up to about Eugene's shins. On the waxy wooden surface of this table sits the shrine. A red and white bong crowns this shrine, overseeing all the jars and jars of the speckled grey, yellow, white, and green stuff packed in like mosses. Mason jars of marijuana. Eugene had no idea they came in so many colours. Several glass tubes (what he guesses are smoking pipes, as well as other items he can't identify) break up the otherwise perfect harmony of jars. There are soda can pyramids bordering the floor around the couch. Always something strange and new to look at.

"Is that what I think it is?"

"What?"

Snafu follows his gaze.

"The hookah?"

"Jesus," Eugene remarks.

Snafu laughs.

It's sitting on a dusty bookshelf, dejected, in a corner.

"Haven't pulled 'er out inna while. Kinda'ah bitch."

Eugene sits. The yellow beast squeaks its disapproval as he sinks deeper and deeper into its airy cushions. He comes to rest in front of the shrine, nearly knee to knee with Snafu and hand to hand with illegal drugs. The smell at this short distance is utterly suffocating, the proximity of his host absolutely stifling. But he's intrigued. He can't say he's not. He could never say Snafu didn't intrigue him. And that stings. He was caught from then on. A lost cause. A stray pup. Lost to the overriding whims of lonesome trepidations.

"Wanna hit?"

Eugene waves the offer off, one handed.

Snafu nods and lays the smoldering pipe back down on the low-lying table shrine. He stays quiet, chest puffed up, lips sealed tight, and then exhales. The smell is foul, terrible. It makes his stomach turn. Not just the smell of it all, turning and grabbing at the air with its smoky fingers, noit's the idea. It's because it's illegal and Eugene's a good boy.

He immediately hops up.

His knee hits the shrine table.

The bong wobbles and shakes.

Snafu's eye watches it shrewdly.

It settles.

"Sorry. I've got to go. I, uh, my head hurts."

He was being honest of course. Eugene could never bring himself to completely fabricate a line. It always came from the truth, or some strain of the truth. He was an honest person, one of the last, one of the few (or so he thought), and being here made him feel dishonest, downright bad, like he's kicking around with murderers and rapists and drug dealers and cruel, insane addicts and.

"Hate tah say it, but this'll help with that, man."

He's taken another puff.

The smoke this time he lazily sends Eugene's way.

Eugene squints at it.

Snafu's smile hasn't broken.

"Also have some aspirin or somethin'. In th' kitchen. Hardly ever go in there though, be careful."

He gamely points to a collection of swords Eugene hadn't noticed before.

"Thanks, but."

"C'mon. Got nowhere else to be?"

"No."

Eugene shrugs.

"I'll even make it easy for ya. Hold yer horses."

He grabs for the red and white bong, the neck long and spiraling into a red and white candy cane design. Eugene finds that he stays and watches him go through the entire process of cleaning out where the drugs go, prepping it, filling it and then lighting it. He finds that he stays for Snafu's spectacular storm cloud of an exhale. He even finds that he stays to be handed the bong itself, lip still smoking, thin tendrils languidly spilling out.

He blinks.

"Here, sit."

Eugene drops down to the cushion.

"Now." Snafu turns to him. "Just put your lips over it," Snafu smiles, " and suck it all in. Ya gotta make sure ya hold it in yer lungs. Ya'll feel it here, ah tightness, an' then _fooo_ let it all go. Is' friendly stuff this, but it's ah creeper. C'mon. To break in our new friendship. To our _wonderful_ new friendship."

Eugene smiles weakly, holding the bong like one would an expensive decanter.

"Just one, man," Snafu proclaims, giving him the thumbs up.

"An' thas it."

Eugene feels a surge of strange delight. He likes this Snafu character, and he might as well make nice, at the very least. They are going to be neighbours from now on. No need in having any sort of friction between them. None at all.

There's a wetness on the rim as he puts his lips to it. In a growing madness he realizes it's saliva left over from Snafu's lips. His flatly sexual cherry red lips. His cheeks light up. He goes ahead and takes the smoke in, and he holds it like he was told, right in his chest. The burn is like nothing else. He exhales and immediately starts hacking and coughing.

Snafu plucks the bong from his grasp.

"Let it out. Go ahead an' cough, man. S'alright."

Snafu pats his back and then takes a rip himself.

The room is hazy dense.

Snafu lights another cigarette. As his lighter sparks, the sparks, oh, orange and white, dazzling, blooming outward, joyously jumping up, so intensely bright, but just for that moment, that forever moment, a lingering second, Eugene notices things are a bit different, a bit off.

"How ya feel?"

"Fuzzy," says Eugene.

Snafu guffaws.

 

He sits for a long time, or what felt like a long time, days even, weeks, watching Snafu play video games and smoke and drink and talk about anything and everything and laugh his good laugh. Not that any of it got through to Eugene, he was on a separate plane, watching the dust fall and the smoke swirl. Objects felt outlined and contrasted, heavy. So did his head. His lungs felt heavy, too, and every breath coming in. But, he could feel his heart racing, pumping a marathon of blood through his system. He felt excruciatingly present and yet frozen in time. A paradox. A contradiction.

"Ya'll right? Earth to"

Eugene coughs.

"Yeah. I'm here."

"How ya feelin'?"

Eugene wants to tell him, but he also feels like sleeping. He closes his eyes.

He can see shadows and shapes, dancing.

"I feel like a ghost."

"Cool," Snafu says.

And that's the last thing Eugene recalls before waking up on the awful yellow beast.

"It lives."

Eugene shoots upright.

"Whoa, didn't mean tah scare ya, sleepin' beauty."

Snafu's smiling at him, lips a softer, less intense red, his face sleep swollen.

Eugene pauses, aghast.

"I..."

"Slept here last night. S'all good."

Eugene, still in the clothes from the day before, stands and briskly leaves, almost losing his footing on the narrow stairs on the way down. Snafu doesn't follow and doesn't call out after him, he lets him be. Eugene is silently grateful. 

He finds his door unlocked but everything in its place when he gets in. He locks the dead bolt behind him and leans against the door. For the rest of the day he organizes his medical books and gives his mom a call. Snafu is quiet and subdued upstairs. Maybe yelling out once or twice in aggravation at his video game, but otherwise a ghost.

Eugene grows guilty.

 

A knock on his door the next day sets him upright.

He's not ready for those big, beautiful eyes.

Those sea squalls.

Those poetic wet dreams.

"C'mon," Snafu simply says, and Eugene follows.

Because he'd been waiting.

 

The dense grey fog is back. He can hardly see the posters across the room. But that's alright. Snafu's laughing and jabbering away. Eugene can't begin to understand his twisted accent, his twisted, poured out words. But that's alright. He's floating, or flying, or falling, or all of the above. When he closes his eyes he feels himself drift. A side shift and then a downward spiral and then he needs to opens his eyes again before he loses himself. His thoughts, there are so many, change and move, like twisting snakes. Every emotion and realization dazzling, blinding. Snafu passes him the peace pipe and he takes it. He's getting the hang of this now. He can nearly light it on his own. Snafu calls them 'baby hits' though, what he does, because he toasts it so lightly, the bowl, that's what it's called, and then sucks in the slightest bit. 

His exhales are thin, sickly things.

"Such a delicate thing," Snafu jokes.

"Gotta hit it like a man," he says.

He takes the pipe from him and toasts it himself.

It flares up, Snafu's eyebrows rising a tick.

After a moment he lefts off and hands it back.

He doesn't exhale.

Not yet.

Still not.

He bursts out with it, coughing.

The smoke fills the living room.

"There. That thar's a man's hit," he says, Texan accent included.

He giggles afterward.

Eugene's smiling, wide and honest. It's a wonderful thing.

"How do you do this all day?" Eugene asks.

"Ah sell, son."

"What, this? You sell weed?"

"Kinda makes sense."

He indicates the jars.

"Don' just sell either, ah grow."

He seems quite pleased by the admittance.

"Isn't that..."

"Dangerous? Only if yer stupid."

Snafu throws one of his too-open smiles his way.

"I've got a part time job, too."

Eugene's gonna need one of those soon. Sooner rather than later. He's going to have to pay for things somehow. His parents will only help him along so far. They've given him shelter all his life, now it's time for him to give it a go. He shrugs. He thinks about college. About Snafu. About his mom and about how horrifically disappointed she will be. He takes another hit and lets his worries, for the moment, flow out with the exhaust from his lungs. And he thinks some more on Snafu and floats away. He sees his yellowed teeth, his square jaw, his tan face, handsome features. Those eyes, those eyes. Oh. He has a tiny cut too, just a lightened line, on the underside of his bottom lip. He sees his bruised eyelids from lack of sleep. His wrists. Delicate of bone. Higher up, at his arms, he sees he's strong, sinew, muscle.

Eugene finds he can't stop thinking about him.

Snafu the drug dealer, Snafu the pot head, Snafu the techno-junky.

"You don't drive, do you?"

Eugene's red Civic is parked in the slanted two-car driveway.

"No."

"How do you get anything? Or anywhere, for that matter."

"The internet, my love."

He takes a drag from his fresh cigarette.

"Or my skateboard."

Eugene laughs.

"Skateboard," he repeats.

Snafu turns away from the TV screen just enough to wink at him.

"You're weird."

"Ah know."

 

They do this for several days, all the same. He starts waking up on Snafu's yellow beast of a leather couch more often than he finds himself in his own bed. His tongue is fuzzy-sour, he's sensitive to light, sleeps until noon or well beyond. Not to mention the bouts of insane paranoia. He'd gone through lengthy scenarios, out loud, to Snafu, about cops busting in and carting them off to jail. He was convicted and sure of it. Snafu just laughed and smoked on. The paranoia was the worst, followed by the acute forgetfulness.

The month's rent is full up and his mother brings by food and supplies as an excuse to see him. All is well. Even so, Snafu always seems to have a bounty. His shelves are stocked, like he's readying for the apocalypse. He freely accommodates him in any way. Food, drink, smoke. He's, to this day, not asked for anything in return. He simply smiles, that bare naked smile, and smokes his long cigarettes, lights his strawberry incense sticks all around the apartment, the pink dust rubbing off on his fingertips, staining his pants, his shirts. Cigarette ash hides under his fingernails, tar from cleaning pipes gumming his thumb pads.

Eugene's hands start to look similar. He's packing pipes and passing them to people he's never met, smiling voidly. No one's home but they all smile and nod and act polite. He gets nicknames and last names. Chopper. Barstool. Magic Hands. Ridiculous names and random snatches of phrases and greetings. Snafu weighs grass and divvies it up to every drop-in strange face. The cash is almost always rolling in, or out. He packs his bills wrapped in rubber bands into a black bag, meticulously counted. Eugene doesn't know where he keeps it, but he does know it's hidden away at night.

He starts ending up with things he wouldn't really ask for or seek out or even use outside these walls. Snafu orders them off the internet, via his command center, and has Eugene open them, one by one, as they come, telling him he could have whatsoever he wanted. Things coming through included a 52" katana, two crossbows, a trench coat, MREs for a year, miles of paracord, rolls of duct tape. It doesn't end. Eugene starts to feel a creeping uneasiness.

That night, Snafu tells him a history about himself.

A sad truth.

The TV screens are on, one showing a desktop from the yeti PC and one showing the main menu to one of his many game consoles on standby. The darting and oscillating shapes on the game console's screen draws in Eugene's tired eyes. He watches them go round and round and mix colours, dotting out to forest green, waving back in to a deep blue. Snafu starts telling him a story. How it began he doesn't remember. He glides into it, coming in half way, or at the very end. He doesn't know.

"the shot. I went running in. He was on the floor, motionless. Ya'know? Just still."

His voice is mellow, calm, never changing.

"Ah rolled 'im over. His eyes were rolled back an' his hair damp to the touch."

The colour-swapping shapes are orange now, turning red brick.

"Shot himself in the head."

Eugene swallows. His tongue is dusty dry.

"Ah wrapped the bed sheet around his head. It soaked through."

And that was it.

The atmosphere stays hollowed.

 

Eugene wakes up that very next morning to yelling. Not just a single voice, but two. His head rolls over slowly to bring Snafu and another person into the picture. He can't tell who the new addition is because his back is showing (even so, he only has words and faces, nothing fits together), but he knows his hair is sandy brown and long. And, he's hunched up, defensive. Snafu's across from him, his face in full view, dead serious. More details fall into place. He's holding his skateboard at arm's length, wielding it like a damn sword. He's threatening him, or holding him off. 

Eugene sits upright. Snafu's eyes dart over to meet his.

It's a wild look.

He doesn't know what to make of it.

The person eventually leaves, thudding down the stairs and slamming the front door.

"Christ. Fuckin' thick, that guy," Snafu grumbles.

The skateboard is put down.

"Can tell him over an' over and he still doesn't get it."

He torches a cigarette.

"Fuck."

"What was that about?"

"Not sellin' for those prices."

The gun shows up after that. And, Eugene can tell he doesn't fancy the idea. Snafu's grimacing more than he's ever seen him do in their knowledge of each other. It's putting hard lines in his forehead. Makes him look so much older. Much older than twenty-four. The sorts of things he's been through, the things he's seen, they've taken a good bit out of him too. He might be wiser for it, but he's also tired for it. Just tired.

"It's staying in the cupboard," Snafu says.

"But, you can't reach it from here. Shouldn't it should be close? We don't do transactions in the kitchen."

"Don' want to rely on it."

"Okay..."

It stays in the cupboard, locked, loaded, safety on.

The immodest Colt .45.

He's in better spirits when it's forgotten about.

Eugene learns later on that the person on the other end of Snafu's skateboard is called Mack. His brother they call Hambone. They're buyers of his. Taking his home (closet) grown, dried out clippings and buds and selling them to other people who either sell it themselves, little by little, or the entire bulk, for a profit. Snafu has no middle man. All his money went straight into his pocket. The profits were entirely in the green. Literally. But, in turn, Mack and Hambone have been hassling Snafu more and more aggressively to give them discounts. They know he's just one man.

Snafu never does.

So, the immodest Colt .45 sleeps.

 

They must have come late at night, Mack and this Hambone, to steal Snafu's mason jar stash. They leave the cash (as it was hidden) and the plants, but anything smokable was taken. It was the one night that Eugene was downstairs in his own apartment. Coincidentally, and fortunately, as Eugene looked at it, Snafu was as well. He only goes into his apartment to meet his mom (who's convinced his father to pay for another month's rent) or to change his clothes. 

His lives upstairs. His life is Snafu and this new habit, and the smoke, and the laughter, and the late nights, and the rambling conversations, the comfort. That night they had stayed longer than usual, and they smoked a joint under a red tinted light bulb Snafu brought with. The room had looked bloodied and dark. He's spinning, out of control, but it's good, it's smooth. Where and when it stops... he's not sure he wants it to.

When they made their way back upstairs, to see the door ajar, knocked inward, and rushed in, and found the damage, Snafu had a coronary. Said it only could have been them.

They could have come when Eugene was in the shower. And Snafu sat and smoked. Until, that is, he finished and got up and climbed in with Eugene, who, in his own way, had a coronary. If he'd been sober his chances would have been even higher. He's got a murmur down in his heart, somewhere throughout all its chamber, so it's not impossible. He kept his eyes high above Snafu's the entire time. The air was steamy and hard to breathe enough as it was, and they were so close, nearly touching, inches apart, a twitch apart. The water poured on. He'd found himself looking off, wandering, catching sight of a naked thigh, a bare shoulder, and feeling a rush not courtesy the heated rain. 

They could have come while they were sleeping, side by side, squeaky clean and doped up, stretched out on Eugene's narrow mattress. They've been sleeping together these days. Just sleeping, side by side. They've even been through an evolution. It started as back to back, and then it went face to face, and then, for no reason at all really, they started huddling close together, embraced. He doesn't know how it got started, he just knows neither of them have ever spoken aloud about it. Nor about showering together. If it suited his fancy Snafu would just jump in with him. It's to his fancy, or his schedule. Eugene never says anything. They dress separately.

It becomes regular. 

 

Snafu doesn't leave his apartment for a stint after the robbing.

Eugene finds he does the same.

They stay couped up, in each other's company, smoking.

Snafu plots retaliation immediately. He knows people, lots of people, and a lot of those people like him and find him to be good for their pockets and wallets. So, he tells Eugene, if any one of those lot sees Mack or Hambone (either one will do, both would be perfection), they're to snatch 'em up and bring them here. Snafu explains he's going to make an example. Eugene only ever heard that in movies before. Hearing it said in reality is absurd and hard to believe.

Snafu makes good on the statement.

Mack and Hambone are rounded up, like a couple of bandits, and Snafu breaks their wrists, one by one, all four accounted for; given the same love and caring attention as the last. He cracks them with a hammer as everyone, Eugene and the guys who brought them in, watch, silently. The sound, the meaty snap, a gruesome song carefully orchestratedsomething Eugene will carry with him always--punctuates that silence.

He feels decidedly sick afterwards.

Snafu is keyed up and wide-eyed.

He's seeing him in a new light.

 

Eugene comes to this time and it's Snafu's slightly blurred face, calm and sleeping, inches away. His arms he has thrown around him. One rests on Eugene's hip, dirty fingers spread out, dangling. The other is underneath his neck and coming around hugged to his back, leaving that hand rested on his shoulder, embrace somehow completed. He can't move without waking him. So, he doesn't. For a while he listens to him breathing. Can feel it against his face. Can smell his warm skin. He's unrecognizable like this, dead asleep. That calm face, that vulnerable air. It doesn't fit him at all.

He moves and Snafu rolls away.

They're in Snafu's bedroom.

It's midafternoon.

Traffic blurs by.

A bus shakes the floor where he stands.

He watches his friend sleep. And that's what he is. And he loves him for it. He doesn't know to what extents he would go to in order to protect that friendship, because he can't imagine what might happen day to day, but he knows, running moment to moment, hit to hit, lips smoking, eyes dreamy and far away, that he'll do his best.

It happens fast.

The change. Happy to bowel-clenching in seconds. His fists are throbbing, beaten to a fleshy, bruised mess. His jaw and the orbit of his left eye are aching warmly. He'd been punched there, square in the eyeball, moments ago, lost in the thick of it. There'd been too many of them not to get mobbed, but somehow they're still here. Defeated, yes, shattered, yes, but here. Snafu's snorting and swallowing blood. They might have broken his nose. They probably did. War begets war, retaliation begets retaliation. A circular motion into infinity. The boys were there because of Mack and Hambone.

They made it violently clear.

Eugene hadn't given into fear.

He hadn't backed off or cowered.

Snafu hugs him.

They use creamsicles to numb their pained faces.

 

It's been three months since he moved in. This is all he's known. He doesn't go out with his friend Sid anymore. He doesn't read like he used to, or call his mom as often. He doesn't think about school running up fast to meet him. He floats on, rubbery, letting the ethers take him. For a time that's good, it's all he needs. He gets his parents to believe he's gotten a decent part time job. He pays his rent with Snafu's personal checks.

"Truly one of ah kind. Like Sancho Panza to my Quixote."

Eugene is perplexed by the comparison, and somehow pleased.

"If Sancho had been madly in love with Quixote."

Snafu laughs.

Eugene slugs him in the arm.

It's not that it's untrue, it's that he's slowly realizing it.

He rolls over into the comforting smell of him at night.

He laughs and lazes with him in the days.

Crises averted.

They share food together.

And, he's started smoking.

So, they share cigarettes.

Dark circles are crowding in under his eyes.

He feels tired all the time.

His cell phone accumulates a back log of messages from his mother and others ( _It's mom, give me a call. Eugene, please call me. Gene, honey, Sid went by the other night and couldn't get an answer, please let me know you're okay. We're worried._ ) They grow and heighten in desperation. It twists his guts, but he never answers when she calls. Or when Sid calls. He flips the phone over, groans, and depresses the silent button. A cigarette comes his way and he puffs it.

 

They've just come in from getting some fresh air and a cigarette. Snafu starts kissing his hands, his fingers, his wrists. His eyes are deep and solid, a cobalt sort of shade, a menacing shade. Eugene watches. He's not quite sky high but he's not standing on his own two feet either. He's delightfully in between. Limbo.

There's a creak, a loose floorboard.

Snafu leans in and catches his lips, for just a second, because the next second Eugene's pulling away.

Sid stands at the head of the stairs.

They'd forgotten to lock the front door.

"Gene."

Sid's voice is low.

And then he's gone.

 

"You shouldn't be doing that."

"What?"

"You don't even know him. What would your mom think, Gene?"

Eugene catches him at the foot of the stairs, heading out to the cement porch. He doesn't have anything to say. His fists are clenched, and the air's cold, brisk. The Sun's gone down, the only source of constant light now would be the distant and yellow street lamps lining the street. Vehicles pass intermittently. Sid looks ill in the light. Eugene's fists have gone sweaty. He doesn't want to be doing this.

Defending himself.

"Look what he's doing to you."

"What? Loving me?"

Sid cringes at the thought.

"It's not right."

He's imploring him, urging him.

Eugene has every desire to slam the door in his face.

He seethes instead, angry.

"I'm going back inside."

"Think about this Eugene."

He shuts the door.

It's not a slam, but it's not quiet either.

Eugene finds Snafu on the leathery yellow beast.

The immodest Colt .45 sits close by.

"Who was that?" he asks.

Eugene has every right to be worried.

"Just a friend. That's all," he says.

He doesn't sleep well that night.

 

"What is this?"

He says it out of no influence at all.

"Thursday," Snafu answers.

"No, I mean... You and me."

Snafu doesn't immediately respond. He's turned towards his television screens.

His music is an underlining beat.

"Does it really matter what it is?" he asks.

"No. I guess not."

"Love is love, in my opinion."

Eugene thinks on this.

"I can't stop thinking about you."

It's such a bad line.

Snafu's smile shows him he thinks the same.

"Thanks," he chirps.

Eugene decides to put off college.

He'd always wanted to fire a gun anyway.


End file.
